An Internet of Things (IoT) refers generally to a global infrastructure that interconnects things to the internet. A thing in the IoT may refer to a uniquely identifiable physical or virtual thing that is accessible via network connectivity. Such things may be integrated into an information network through intelligent interfaces. An IoT system may refer to any system within the internet of things. IoT systems may include one or more end devices, such as sensors for example, which may be referred to as a front-end. IoT systems may include gateways to other networks, which may be referred to as a back-end. Many IoT devices have at least some combination of limited battery power, small memory footprint, or low throughput links. In addition, many of these devices are “sleepy,” which means that the devices can go into a sleep mode. A sleep mode generally refers to a low power state that conserves power. When in a sleep mode, devices often suspend network communication. Devices may wake-up and re-establish communication after being in the sleep mode, and thus the suspension of network communication may be temporary. For example, a device may wake-up in response to an event that occurs or devices may be awaken after a preconfigured amount of time expires.
Both IoT endpoint devices and IoT routers can be sleepy. An example IoT implementation is shown in FIG. 1. FIG. 1 is a block diagram of an example system 100, such as a wireless sensor network (WSN) for example. The system 100 may be multi-hop in nature and may include battery operated IoT devices that function as endpoint devices. For example, the system 100 may include a plurality of IoT devices 102. The devices 102 may function as endpoint devices 104 or router devices 106 that route upstream and downstream packets to/from the endpoint devices 104. Existing approaches to supporting IoT sleepy nodes have several shortcomings. For example, nodes are often not aware of whether other nodes in a network are sleepy, and thus do not efficiently and effectively communicate in networks with sleepy nodes.